Kyriaki Fousiani

University of Groningen | RUG · Department of Organizational Psychology

The European Union (EU) legislation suggests that EU member states progressively adopt and implement policies that are primarily in line with the broader European interests, and secondarily with specific national interests. Yet, citizens from various EU member-states often oppose these EU directives and adopt attitudes that favor national or indivi...

Purpose In this meta-analysis, the authors investigate the relationship between self-construal and conflict management strategies and shed light on the inconsistent findings in the literature. Moreover, they examine the mediating role of face concerns in this relationship. Importantly, the present meta-analysis is the first to test the assumptions...

Person Perception Theory suggests that two traits, warmth and competence, govern social judgments of individuals and that warmth has a primacy effect over competence because of its capability to predict people's intentions. Drawing on economic (i.e., rational) decision-making theories, we hypothesized that in organizations, which are by definition...

The Big Two theoretical framework suggests that two traits, namely morality and competence, govern social judgments of individuals and that morality shows a primacy effect over competence because it has more diagnostic value. In this study we tested the primacy effect of morality in the workplace by examining how instrumental or relational goals of...

The literature regarding the effect of power on negotiation strategies remains scattered and inconsistent. We propose that the effect of power on negotiation strategies is contingent on contextual variables but also on individual differences among negotiators. Specifically, we hypothesize that creativity moderates the effect of power such that low-...

In the present research, we examine how power and group membership of an offender influence observers’ motives for punishment. As compared to powerless offenders, powerful offenders should elicit a stronger motivation of an observer to incapacitate them and protect society (i.e., utilitarian punishment motivation). Moreover, demonization of the off...

This study aimed to replicate the intuitive retributivism hypothesis, according to which people’s punitive sentiments are predominantly driven by retributive concerns. Contrary to prior research that focuses on how people punish offenders, this study investigated how people punish individuals suspected of immoralities. Moreover, we manipulated a su...

In the present research, we examine how culture influences individuals' reactions to financial offenders. We hypothesized that horizontal individualists deploy increased active reactions (i.e., punishment-oriented) whereas vertical collectivists deploy increased passive reactions (i.e., condemning beliefs) to financial offenders. Moreover, we hypot...

Status can be seen as power over valued resources, or as prestige that lies in the eyes of the beholder. In the present research we examine how power versus prestige influence observers' punishing motives. Possession of power implies the capacity to harm and elicits threat, and therefore should trigger stronger incapacitative motives for punishing...

How leaders construe their power may greatly affect the quality of relationships they have with their followers. Indeed, we propose that when leader power is (perceived to be) construed as responsibility, this will positively affect the extent to which followers perceive high quality leader-follower relationships (LMX), whereas the opposite will be...

Status can be seen as power over valued resources or as prestige that lies in the eyes of the beholder. In the present research, we examine how power versus prestige influence observers’ punishing motives. Possession of power implies the capacity to harm and elicits threat and therefore should trigger stronger incapacitative motives for punishing a...

Positive attitudes and trust towards former adversaries facilitate reconciliation and peace building. Both historical and current intergroup experiences such as intergroup contact and conflict predict intergroup attitudes and trust, but no previous research has investigated the joint effects of these experiences. Therefore, we study the interplay o...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine two opposing approaches to the effects of power on negotiation: a “collaborative approach” of power and a “competitive approach” of power. Accordingly, the authors state oppositional hypotheses based on each approach. This study further investigates the mediating role of the perceived threat of the ne...

This is the accepted version of the forthcoming paper in Political Psychology. ABSTRACT Positive attitudes and trust towards former adversaries facilitate reconciliation and peacebuilding. Both historical and current intergroup experiences such as intergroup contact and conflict predict intergroup attitudes and trust but no previous research has...

Relationships are seldom equal. In fact, social interactions involve most of the times power asymmetric relationships. Especially in organizations people are daily faced with situations where they are either in a powerful or in a powerless position compared to others. Power stems from various sources and takes several forms. For instance, people ar...

Purpose: We examined two opposing approaches to the effects of power on negotiation: a “collaborative approach” of power and a “competitive approach” of power. Accordingly, we stated oppositional hypotheses based on each approach. We further investigated the mediating role of the perceived threat of the negotiation, and the moderating role of negot...

Two experiments were conducted in order to test whether suffering as a result of bullying affects the perceived humanness of the victims. We hypothesized that observers who are confronted with suffering and passive endurance of victimization will view victims as less than human. We propose a double dehumanization of victims, that is, denial of both...

In the present research, we examined a discrepancy between people's beliefs about, versus punitive reactions towards, offenders. Particularly, appraisals of offenders along the dimension of communion (i.e., being friendly or trustworthy) should primarily affect people's beliefs about them, as reflected in demonizing and conspiracy theories, and to...

To maintain a positive overall view of their group, people judge likeable ingroup members more favourably and deviant ingroup members more harshly than comparable outgroup members. Research suggests that such derogation of deviant ingroup members aims to restore the image of the group by symbolically excluding so-called 'black sheeps'. We hypothesi...

The purpose of this experiment was to test how ethnic group membership of both the bullies and the victims influence the way that observers attribute human characteristics to bullies. Ethnic group membership was manipulated in terms of bullies’ and victims’ ethnicity (ingroup-majority group versus outgroup-minority group). Furthermore, we examined...

Information about a victim's emotional state influences observers' justice-providing reactions. This study (N = 124) tested people's motives for distribution of justice depending on whether emotions with differential social value were experienced by a victim. Uniquely human (UH) emotions are highly valued compared to non-uniquely human (NUH) emotio...

The present investigation aimed to explore whether distressing situations that inflict suffering can induce denial of humanness to the self and others. The first study (N =73) explored whether positive situations are perceived as more human than negative ones. Study 2 (N = 158) examined the association between self-dehumanization and dispositional...

Due to the progress in information technology, cyber-bullying is becoming one of the most common forms of interpersonal harm, especially among teenagers. The present study (N = 548) aimed to investigate the relation between perceived parenting style (in terms of autonomy support and psychological control) and cyber-bullying in adolescence. Thereby,...

This research investigates the effect of controlled versus autonomous motivation on intergroup relations. Two studies were conducted: Study 1 (N = 152 Greek Cypriot undergraduate students) showed that controlled motivational orientation, measured as a personality variable, was related to more prejudicial beliefs toward outgroups, lower intrinsic mo...

The aim of this study was to explore to what extent enduring individual variables, namely Machiavellianism and economic opportunism, are involved in self-dehumanization. Confirming our hypotheses, a first study (N = 109) showed that Machiavellians (Machs) attribute more mechanistic, less human characteristics to the self. A second study (N = 150) f...

-The goal was to investigate the association of economic opportunism with self-efficacy, optimism, and positive emotion. It was hypothesized that economic opportunists should experience lower self-efficacy, less positive thinking, and less optimism. Study 1 (N = 206) showed that economic opportunism was negatively correlated with self-efficacy, opt...

In contemporary research on autonomy development, autonomy has been defined as independence (vs. dependence) or as self-endorsed (vs. controlled) functioning. Analogously, perceived parental autonomy support involves either perceived parental promotion of independence or perceived parental promotion of volitional functioning. The primary aim of the...

This study aimed at examining the existing relation among parenting, cultural value orientation, and bullying propensity at school. The participants (N = 231) were early adolescents randomly selected from 11 different schools in urban and rural areas of Cyprus. The results showed that a statistically significant relation exists between parental aut...

The purpose of the present study was to examine the existing association between cultural value orientation, authoritarian parenting, and bullying and victimization at school. The participants (N = 231) were early adolescents, randomly selected from 11 different schools in urban and rural areas of Cyprus. Participants completed self reports measuri...

This research contributes to progress in comprehension of the construct of opportunism and defection through investigation of some personality correlates of opportunism. It reports the results of 3 studies that aim to explore the relationships between economic opportunism and autonomy, agreeableness, and well-being. The first 2 studies (Ns = 193 an...

According to Evolutionary Game Theory, multiple exchanges with partners are necessary to foster cooperation. Multiple exchanges with partners tend to enhance the good experience of the partners and the predictability of their behaviour and should therefore increase cooperativeness. This study explored whether social embeddedness, or the preference...

The objective of this study was to test the contact hypothesis and examine Secondary Transfer Effects (STE) of contact to outgroups uninvolved in contact. Hypotheses were that increased contact with outgroup members would relate to positive feelings towards members of that outgroup and by extension towards members of the other out-groups through a...

Compliance literature postulates that when people perform an externally imposed request by free choice, they commit to it and therefore modify their attitudes and behaviours in line with this request. The present research examined whether the type of motivation (autonomy vs. control) plays a significant role in whether attitude and behaviour change...

The psychosocial literature contains empirical evidence of the effects of personality variables on commitment to acts. The association of economic opportunism was explored with respect to postexperimental attitude change, intentions, and intrinsic motivation of individuals (N=132) toward acts with either forced compliance or compliance without pres...

The distribution of success and failure to social groups is supported by lay theories about the characteristics of social groups and the causes of their outcomes, as well as by beliefs about entitlement of groups to succeed or fail. This paper presents a study where a target individual’s socio-economic status (high vs. low) and outcome in a major a...